The value of time

A recent study from the Mayo clinic that shows extremely high mortality in patients who are over 75 years old who have elected to undergo dialysis is sobering. With over 40% of the sample population passing within six months and a high percentage unable to return home, one has to wonder if decision-making could be improved. This is indeed a difficult question, one that may not have a clear answer, but it is worthwhile to think about it.

If human life cannot be infinitely sustained, then, there is an optimal decision point to extinguish it. If the objective function is a combination of individual and societal utility, maximization of value would require a mutual decision. If human life is standardizable, allowing high substitutability, life would appear to be a wasting asset. In such a situation, life will unambiguously lose value with time and the option held by the individual and society mutually to terminate would be optimally exercised earlier than what current norms allow. Thus, modern societies need to postulate better exits for its members.

On the other hand, if science and technology slopes indicate a step-function change to improve the life span of humans by orders of magnitude, then, exercising the option to exit early is suboptimal – both for the individual and possibly for society. In a world of declining aggregate number of humans, such an exit is extremely expensive. Assuming substitutability, the value of a human life, then, is a function of stock and flow of humans as well as the forecasted lifespan of an individual.

Thus, the value of remaining time for an individual can be reliably forecasted using a few attributes such as total population, net rate of growth and the probability of extension of human lifespan in the near future.

Intelligent evolution

A recent article published in the journal of PLOS pathogens show data indicating that evolvability is an important characteristic of selection. This is a finding that points to the importance of optimal control in a multi-stage game of evolution. Random mutation and single stage selection always sounded too simplistic to many. Now, it appears that evolution is not necessarily that straight forward.

Ridiculing each others’ position has taken much of the air time for debating evolution. There is no theory (let alone hypothesis) that could NOT be modified with new data and insights. Those bowing to the super creators of religion fight endless wars with the super scientists, who have figured it all out. Well, in physics about 4%, in biology less and in economics lesser. Flexibility of mind is much more valuable than conventional belief systems. As much of the world turn around predictable axes, the rest have to attempt to move thoughts forward.

If evolution, indeed, is a multi-stage game and selection shows optimal control, then, one has to question contemporary ideas. If evolution is intelligent, what may not be?

Horizontal innovation

Recent research from MIT shows structural and mechanical guidance from snails and clams improve the designs of robots. This is in a favorable direction of the application of Mathematics, informed by optimal designs from Biology. Vertical specialization has been substantially dampening breakthrough innovation in both engineering and medicine. Synergistic cooperation between mathematicians and biologists could steepen the innovation trajectory in both.

Engineers have been utilizing data in creative ways for centuries. This is a discipline that has invented and utilized much of the analytics, currently rediscovered by scientists. The basic notion that biological systems are too complex to be systematically analyzed using data, kept the discipline back for decades. Now, human genome and big data seem to have broken the shackles.

However, one has to be careful jumping into “big noise,” with presumed success. There will be setbacks and some may declare victory prematurely at the first sign of success. There is significant potential here but it would require professionals with limited horizontal view to trade their egos for a chance of higher success.

Involuntary terraforming

News that a new species of bacteria was found in two category 4 clean room facilities used for assembling payloads for space in two different parts of the World illustrate the difficulties of executing sterilized exploration. This coupled with the fact that earthly organisms were found on Mars probes indicate that the first inhabitants of the planet continue to fool their somewhat more evolved cousins. This is concerning, as humans have a forgettable history of negatively influencing areas they have explored in the past.

Physical exploration of space appears too archaic in the presence of improving technologies for remote viewing. More importantly, the fascination to physically explore the Solar system, apparently to find life, may have to be tempered based on the recent hypothesis that there are at least 8 billion Earth like planets orbiting Sun like stars in the Milky Way alone. Human exploration of the Solar system for extraterrestrial life is a bit like riding a bicycle around the house in an effort to find Lions or some other majestic animals. It is unlikely.

It is time we rethought micro space exploration. The expected information gain from such exploits is close to zero.

Maximum MOM

India’s successful launch of the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is good news. After a few weeks in the Earth’s orbit, the orbiter will be heading out to the famed red planet. The journey, however, is fraught with danger with only the ESA making it in the first attempt.

Ref: NewScientist

A larger question is why India (and before that Japan, China and the ESA) attempted to develop their own technology for the Mars mission. After the US and Russia have already demonstrated viable technologies to reach the orbit and then land on Mars, it is unclear why reinventing such technologies is an economically good decision.

The utility a country derives from developing its own Mars mission may have four parts.

Public Pride (PuP) = Pride from achieving something for humanity

Private Pride (PrP) = Pride from showcasing the country’s accomplishments

Public Data (PuD) = Data and information that will be disseminated publicly

Private Data (PrD) = Data and information that will be held confidential

V = PuP + PrP + PuD + PrD

If the total cost of the mission is C, the the return to the country is (V-C)/C. However, since the true economic value of pride is close to zero, the country’s real return from such missions is low. It can, however, boost this return by acquiring such technologies from countries that have already demonstrated viability.

For example, in India’s case, if it is able to swallow the less valuable pride, then it could buy the technology (from the US or Russia) for just PrD. By doing so, it loses PrP but the selling country will likely subsidize PuP and PuD. In this case, its return from the mission is (PuP+PuD)/PrD. This is likely substantially higher than developing the technology on its own. At the very least, the cost will likely be an order of magnitude less.

More generally, society can maximize return on space investments if follower countries (after a single country has accomplished the goal) simply buys the technology from the leader to execute missions.

Behavioral flexibility

A recent study in The American Naturalist suggests that animals show an equal level of behavioral unpredictability as humans. Observations of adult male mosquitofish over a period of time also seem to indicate that some individuals are more unpredictable compared to others. The authors hypothesize that such unpredictability represents behavioral flexibility that facilitates learning or creates confusion for predators.

These observations have implications for modern organizations also. Large enterprises implement organizational constraints to reduce behavioral volatility of its employees – in how they work, execute tasks, get trained and deliver products and services. They also measure time and effort at detailed task level and they generally view volatility in such metrics as undesirable. These actions by companies may be decreasing the ability of their employees to experiment and learn. The long term impact of this could include declining innovation rate, lack of job satisfaction and stagnant productivity.

Unpredictability and behavioral flexibility may have a positive impact on the viability and growth of organizations.

Ref: Flexibility : Flexible Companies for the Uncertain World.

http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781439816325

NIFting LIFE

Recent news that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) has surpassed a critical benchmark – obtaining more energy than provided in a fusion experiment is a significant milestone toward free energy, an outcome that will help solve two tactical problems faced by the Earth, environmental degradation and colliding asteroid vaporization. No cost energy production has become a critical need in a system, wobbling toward extinction, either by the actions of its inhabitants or by space debris that envelop it like fruit flies around a rotten apple.

Lasers focused on a target container for hydrogen fusion – a mini Sun

Ref: BBC News

NIF, plagued by technical difficulties, has been behind on its own goals. But it seems to have accomplished what it set out to do a full year before. If the results are verified and replicated, they successfully demonstrate the concept of sustainable hot fusion with energy accretion. This should boost efforts to scale up fusion into practical power generation.

Ref: LIFE at LLNL

The aptly named, Laser Internal Fusion Energy (LIFE) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been making conceptual power plant designs based on NIF experiments and it appears that we are moving ever closer to reality. Although the goal is to deliver fusion based commercial energy by 2020, recent advancements may allow an accelerated deployment.

Fusion, the only known source for clean energy, may ultimately help humans sneak out of disaster, just in time.

Music to the inventors

Research from Michigan State University shows a high positive correlation between involvement in arts and crafts in childhood (<14 years) to innovation (measured by patents) and business creation later in life. Training and early participation in music, creative writing, photography and other such artistic areas appear to positively influence out-of-the-box thinking, a critical attribute of innovation and new business creation.

It has long been argued that the superiority of the US in innovation is related to its flexible education system that focuses more on whole brain development. Although US may not top other countries in test scores in hard sciences, it does produce a high level of creativity per capita, far in excess of any other country. There is a clear trade off between early specialization in sciences and later creativity. Well known technical institutes around the world, understandably proud of their ability to create a large number of engineers and doctors at will, may be missing a trick. The world may need less human robots in the future, highly efficient in applying what they are taught and it may need more creative individuals who can innovate and create new businesses. An education system focused on creating employees is significantly less valuable than one nourishing inventors and entrepreneurs.

Arts and crafts – that propelled the human psyche out of a dreadful life focused on food and sex – may ultimately give a more substantial makeover for humans.

Option value of organs

A recent study in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology argues that assigning a benefit, say $10,000, to a kidney donor could increase available organs for kidney transplantation by 5%. Although the price elasticity of kidneys is unclear, it seems logical to assume a normal market equilibrium. Ethical issues aside, the owner of an organ may be sub optimizing decisions by not exercising the put option optimally.

Organs are wasting assets, the market value of which are declining over time. The utility one gains from her organs is a function of remaining lifetime – with the asset lost in a catastrophic end. The net value of the asset is the difference between the two, that may show a U shaped curve. The put option held by the owner on her organs has an optimal exercise horizon prior to death. This is especially true if the organ is not essential to life, or acceptable backups exist as in the case of donating one out of the two functioning kidneys.

Tangible economic incentives, if applied correctly, can induce optimal exercise, with beneficial societal impacts.

Lonely baby

Recent discovery of a lonely planet without a star, a mere 80 light years away from the Earth is interesting from many angles. The newborn, just 12 million years old, may indicate a failed star at six times the size of Jupiter. Although ejection theories are abound, this could be a case of star formation in zones not considered active. With this unexpected finding, the frenzy of extra solar planet discovery continues to increase.

However, we now know that planets are out there in large quantities and in every size, age and composition. One has to wonder if further exploration of these somewhat uninteresting objects is a good use of limited resources. It is unclear why so much passion exists in the identification and cataloging of planets. Is it the need to verify the already known structure of the universe or perhaps a desire to find life elsewhere. If it is the former, there is enough data to confirm that planetary systems are replicated across the universe. But if it is the later, then, it is advisable to look closer.

With limited understanding of all the life on planet Earth and possible life in close proximity in the solar system, it does not make sense to seek it elsewhere. If this is driving a good part of the thought processes of budding knowledge seekers, this has the potential for destroying further advances.

Efficient Chicago

The idea was simple but the implications are huge. It is clear to those who understand frameworks but less so to others. The notion that information is quickly reflected in the prices of traded assets, standardized and liquid, in markets that implement clear rules of engagement and property rights, is elegantly obvious. It is, however, singularly confusing to active investors, individuals and institutions, a sizable chunk of the US economy.

The dominance of the Chicago school in shaping economic thinking continues. Recently minted Nobel Laureates – Fama and Hansen, seem to complement wonderfully in the grand tradition of theorization and empirical support. Their work has direct practical consequences for investment decisions and asset pricing models. More importantly, they also provide guidance on resource allocation across the economy.

For example, efficient markets mean passive investing dominates, a conclusion that is robustly supported by empirical observations. Even though risk adjusted excess returns (alpha) is shown to be zero (after management and transaction costs) across investment managers (a direct conclusion of Fama’s Efficient Market Hypothesis), significant resources – money, people and time – are wasted across the world by actively managing liquid investments. One has to wonder why the venerable investment banks and financial institutions, filled to the brim with the brightest, engage in activities that add no value either to themselves or to the economy. To make matters worse, there are over eight million active traders in the US alone, ably assisted by the brokerage houses, pushing buttons and pulling levers arranged on multiple screens in such complexity that they rival the cockpit of the space shuttle. As the markets close every day, some rise like vampires – mad, fast and crazy - aiding and abetting the following day’s trades and newly emerging traders. This is a massive misallocation of capital across the entire economy. This is indeed a systemic issue for the economy where agents are engaged in value destroying activities for a large cohort of the economy, presumably because of monopoly rent and hidden options yielded from asymmetric information between the adviser and the client. Such a market failure, if corrected by appropriate policy actions, could significantly improve global productivity.

Hansen’s method of moments help mere mortals make reasonable models for complex macro phenomena. His focus on incorporating the agent’s thoughts, beliefs, doubts and learnings into modeling her actions and the systematic consideration of uncertainty that is evolving stochastically, is refreshing. Determinism has been the bane of theoretical finance for long and the incorporation of uncertainty in accepted models may help measure risk better – both locally and globally. Policy makers will benefit if they understand that flexibility embedded in policy decisions are valuable in the presence of uncertainty.

Chicago has had an unbelievable run – primarily because of its commitment to embracing unconventional ideas early and nourishing them over long periods of time. However, there are indications that the school is becoming more conventional and it is less inclined to accept emerging ideas. If it deviates from a formula that has been successful for nearly a century, it can quickly mean revert to mediocrity, ably demonstrated by its peers today.

Fusion, fusion everywhere but not here

Recent news that NASA may be making progress toward fusion rockets for inter-planetary travel is encouraging. Given the level of knowledge humans appear to posses, it is embarrassing to be in a situation that limits available energy. Everywhere we look, energy is free and it comes from fusion. The inability of humans to master this universal trick is puzzling, especially because zero cost energy would have set them free – with unlimited food, water and automatically cleaned and stabilized environment for ever.

Digging toxic materials out of the ground and burning them in their unstable green house for energy seem to reveal a level of societal stupidity that is incomprehensible. The tree huggers and hipsters, perhaps with better intentions but with equally stupid notions of energy creation have been clamoring for wind, photovoltaic cells and nuclear fission. Is this because of lack of understanding or is it driven by localized incentives that simply will not allow societally optimal solutions?

Energy creation has to stick to a few simple constraints. The process cannot create waste that needs to use energy and time to process, it cannot affect habitats and the environment and more importantly, it cannot consume more than it produces. What is left?

Connected brilliance

A recent article in the journal of Brain hypothesizes that the unusual level of high connectivity between the left and right hemispheres of Einstein's brain may have contributed to his brilliance. If true, this has implications for many areas including childhood brain exercising and education in general.

Typical designs of the human brain seem to promote hemispherical specialization. This may be an unintentional effect of evolution that may have afforded an advantage to being good in one activity or another. If the objective functions of the individual and society are relatively simple, optimal brain design may be dominated by specialization. After all, it is possible to create an efficient hunting group by assembling spotting, throwing and carrying skills in separate individuals. This seem to have continued in the modern world even in the presence of somewhat more complicated needs.

Education systems that stress focus may create highly specialized individuals, akin to robots that possess a limited, albeit being efficient, skill set. As the information and knowledge needs of society increase, there is a natural push toward specialization. However, education systems that cater to this trend are trading off creating individuals with the ability to transform the world to those who can efficiently work in it.

Education systems providing whole brain content may be able to provide a desirable software connectivity overlay to ordinary brains. It is not realistic to expect another Einstein but perhaps universities can devise ways to incrementally improve what they are provided with.

Simulated colonies

A recent article in the Journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that a simple mathematical simulation explains the formation and progression of human populations between 1500 BCE and 1500 CE. The authors appear proud that their models explain reasonably well how large scale societies formed. However, it also indicates that “intelligently designed” humans resemble ants and bees than something more substantial.

For most of the history of humans – a few parameters that describe the interactions of ecology and geography were enough to explain and forecast their behavior. Sporting fairly simple objective functions that include food, sex and power, human societies flourished with less flexibility and depth shown by ants and bees. They have been understandably proud of the accomplishments of the last few centuries in which they devised faster and more destructive ways to perpetuate the same goals.  Now, simple mathematics prove societal behavior can be easily modeled.

As they dream of perpetuating their genes across the solar system and beyond, humans may benefit from some introspection – what they have done thus far and why they may not do anything different in the future.

Downward mobility

A recent article in Sociology Mind, demonstrating that check cashing outlets strategically target high crime neighborhoods, is an indication that analytics and targeted marketing are kicking into top-gear. Demand for goods and services will be met with supply at prices that will clear the market. The providers of services will maximize profits by selecting the most desirable locations, consumers, products and prices. This is true for crime, guns, prostitution, check-cashing and other such entities. From a policy perspective, however, this has societal implications.

If the reduction of crime has a net economic value to society, then regulating agents that aid crime may be optimal. However, this is an analytical (and empirical) question as regulation adds costs to society by introducing artificial constraints to market clearing mechanisms, resulting in dead-weight losses. The positive spill-over and long-term beneficial effects of crime reduction has to be evaluated against the likely cost of regulations. Both the benefits and costs are uncertain and thus, policies that are staged, introducing flexibility to future course corrections are optimal. Since crime almost always has a perpetrator and a victim, the question is how to shut down access to resources for those who commit the crimes. This is not unlike cutting the blood supply to certain types of cancers. This is, however, a complicated problem as the victims rely on the same mechanisms to live.

Policies have to have a temporal dimension – possibly starting with a severe action (such as government controlled access) with a well laid out plan to move toward a full market based mechanism. The most beneficial policy is not a stagnant one but rather a system with clear and well-articulated transition from necessary regulation to solve the issue at hand to market based mechanisms.

Uncertain governance

As the politicians in Washington battle for their beliefs and brownie points, the coming generation has to seriously consider effecting a transformation in the current governance system. The two-party dysfunction has reached its peak and the halls of the capital are now filled with ignorance and incompetence. The “representatives” simply do not represent the knowledge and capabilities of the population, as over half of them never cared to even vote in recent elections. It is time to move to the future. It is time to break the shackles of irrelevant rules and regulations and equally antiquated law making procedures.

The representative form of democracy is already obsolete in the presence of contemporary and emerging technologies. The elections, controlled by a minority, almost always result in a choice that could be marginally better than the alternative presented, but never the best. Unless the participation in the electoral process can be substantially increased, it will remain to be a sham – an inefficient process to control the damage. The current process elects a handful of people, completely disconnected from the present and with obscene incentives to perpetuate the past. They are ill-equipped to understand the choices in front of them, let alone select the best alternative. Most likely still have fax machines in their offices even though they may not know how to use them. To expect them to effect the best policies for the country is irrational.

The best way to get out of this nightmare is to move to a form of direct democracy – using technology. There is no need to create an inefficient layer between the people and the policies. Alternatives can be easily presented to the people and voted on by the entire country. Perhaps then, the “representatives” can return to their homes and towns and start collecting social security, if it is still available.

Failure

The failure of science to propel thoughts and the failure of religion to lift humanity have left most in the dust – some yearning for meaning and others for food, to sustain themselves. Humans have demonstrated irrationality by living while some attempt to concoct grand theories to explain the inexplicable. In the noise of segmentation – countries, colors and beliefs – homo-sapiens shall sub-optimize and possibly destroy a fantastic quirk in space-time, that is habitable.

They had done it before, erasing sophisticated Neanderthals and running over their cousins across the continents to the South.They had done it before, by pretending superiority and waging wars to prop up their own egos. They had done it before, by travelling far and wide, by injecting diseases and false hopes to the indigenous. They had done it before, by raping and pillaging what is not theirs and then asserting meaningless theories to justify their actions. They had done it before,  by allowing the stupid to rule them and then becoming submissive in their own homes and valleys. They had done it before, by asserting privilege to be talent and initial conditions to be inevitable. They had done it before, by beauty, strength and ignorance.

The failure is irreversible in the presence of societal inflexibility.

Regulatory obsolescence

A recent article in Anesthesia & Analgesia points out that iPhones can already be equipped with Pulse Oximetry – currently only available through expensive and rather bulky equipment in the OR and preparation rooms. However, these devices on smart phones are not yet approved for use. This regulatory overhang is holding back the application of cutting edge technologies in medicine and other areas.

Regulatory agencies with rigid and prescriptive rules are ill-equipped to move at the speed of technology. In such a regime, regulations are likely to constrain the population to antiquated, costly and more risky methods than what may be afforded by contemporary technologies that are more effective but are not proven in the traditional tracks. Unfortunately, the education, skills and knowledge of regulators are unlikely to keep pace with rapidly changing technologies. Thus, decisions made by humans are increasingly less efficient in the creation and implementation of regulations.

A better regulatory regime may be one that describes the expected outcomes in quantitative terms and let technologies, that satisfy such end points, to be automatically approved.

Chandra’s coma

Recent observations from NASA’s Chandra observatory that shows the enormous scope of the Coma cluster of galaxies leave the amateurs dumfounded. The features of this epic structure, spanning over half a million light years, cannot be easily explained. The marriage of at least two giant elliptical galaxies has resulted in a structure of fantastic scale, held in shape, apparently by gravity.

The observation of such structures, ironically, raises more questions than answers. The paradoxical information loss in a black hole, sometimes explained away by the pasting on the surface, leading to the possibility of the universe being a hologram, may need to be revisited. The question is whether peeking into the past is a fruitful activity – does it provide new information or just cloud already established ignorance?

It may be time to look to the future, for the past is too dull or inexplicable with available tools.

Rajan : Intellect to spare

As I walked up to the shabby building in downtown Chicago, battling the bone chilling wind from the lake in 1992, I was looking forward to Rajan’s class. I made the trip from Hyde Park in anticipation of new information and I was never disappointed. Albeit being contemporaries at IIT, my engineering path left me distinctly ignorant of economics and he gave me more than I was bargaining for.

Freshwater economics was refreshing as it provided a robust framework, not unlike the engineering I was used to. The young professor was already showing brilliance as he systematically explained traditional finance from 6 PM to 9 PM. My first peek into research was also instructive with an empirical study into decision-making in financial markets. I attempted to soak the knowledge in with unreliable results. It sounded interesting but it was unclear if managers in firms made decisions that way. Later,I would find that managers were worse, much worse.

The theory was clear – but in practice it turned out be nearly useless. Chicago’s tendency to be enamored by deterministic models is its Achilles heel, as it argued what should be without asking why it is not so. Not many make decisions discounting cash flows but most do calculate an NPV that is swept aside by decision-makers as either irrelevant or incorrect – and for good reasons. Decisions were never that simple – neither in companies nor in the macro economy.

It will be interesting to see if he can bring back an economy in shambles, driven to hell by socialistic and ignorant policies for over five decades.

Mad, fast and dumb

Recent research from the University of Miami warns that the emergence of the “ultrafast machine ecology,” – referring to algorithmic trading - may create more market crashes. This “predatory” behavior, the author argues, is reaching a stage of instability and may need to be regulated. These arguments, based mostly on an engineering view of financial markets seem to be suffering from a lack of understanding of what markets are. Assuming that regulation is the only medicine for any symptom is problematic for many reasons.

First, let’s look at what financial markets are for. They are set up for the trading of standardized paper that represent the value of real assets. Nobody is forced to buy or sell such instruments and markets fundamentally mean that anybody is able to buy and sell those at any time and ideally at any place. The rules that govern such markets are simple – everybody is allowed to analyze publicly available information and make decisions for herself. Granted, the simple rules – equal access to information, no insider trading and no preferential access to trading are not consistently implemented – but that is a different issue.

Second, application of technology to trade is an innovation – but such innovation has not resulted in risk adjusted excess returns (alpha). Nobody has cornered all the wealth in the world yet by algorithmic trading. So in spite of the mad, fast and dumb bunch that shout from the TV screens every evening, the many supercomputers and light years of cable wrapping around the exchanges and the brilliant physicists and mathematicians who fine tune the algorithms continuously – academic studies show that none of these create alpha. Finally, the presumption that “regulation” will solve these “problems” implicitly assumes that the regulators have perfect information to make the optimal rules. If the last decade is any indication, one cannot imagine regulators are that smart.

Analysis of financial markets and trading behavior based on engineering rules is unlikely to provide any insights. Further, assuming that regulation is needed over the application of emerging technologies for trading is wrong, philosophically and practically. It would be a lot better if regulators focus on implementing the rules that already exist consistently and sending the offenders to jail quickly.

An economic loss to society

The passing of Ronald Coase makes us poorer in our ability to conceptualize complex problems that affect society at large and solve them elegantly. He made two invaluable leaps in economics, while teaching law at the University of Chicago and those insights stood the test of time. “The nature of the firm",” survived through industrial revolution into information revolution providing a simple and complete framework to analyze and understand scale and scope of firms. He will repeat it again in “the problem of social cost,” with a clear articulation of the cost of blind government intervention, with normative prescriptions for auctions and allocations.

The elegance of these observations was astonishing and they left mere mortals, yearning for intellectual stimulation. It has influenced a wave of innovation in economic thinking under the umbrella of Chicago school, where frameworks based on a set of principles yielded tools with broad applications to every aspect of society. This ability to solve problems top-down, uncluttered by data and anecdotes, is a skill that is waning. In the contemporary world of “big noise,” where academics and practioners scramble to create and prove hypotheses, such insights are very rare.

A true economic loss to society - perhaps educators and policy-makers may take a moment to look back and see the brilliance.

Dropped call

As the world’s largest democracy attempt to grapple with the problems of its own creation, one has to wonder if the last decade was yet another failed start. From its recent independent beginnings, its incompetent leaders consistently made bad policies – from soft socialism to fully planned societies, with the hope that failed policies elsewhere will work in India. It should be clear by now, that they do not.

Three primary vectors have always held the country back. First, its political elite, with compassion clearly worn on the long sleeves of their home made garments, have always been corrupt – top down. Such a corrupt system simply cannot make optimal policies and a country that claims to be a democracy goes to the poll, mesmerized by a few last names as if it is in some sort of hypnotic trance, and keep electing the same corrupt and incompetent bunch. And second, the one-sided education handed out to the politicians from a few choice institutions in Europe, have sufficiently brain washed even those who may have wanted to do something good. And, finally – a disconnected set of kingdoms, packed into a country for the convenience of the World, still hoards endemic discrimination across classes, regions and sexes.

Central planning does not work, markets do. This simple idea is yet to penetrate those technocrats in charge, still burning the midnight oil to optimize resource allocation and to engineer optimal growth, as if they are the only ones who know how to drive a ship with over 1 billion people to their certain heavenly destiny. The basic idea that past performance is no indication of the future has never been explained to the entire country, that seems to cling to its illustrious past, as if godly intervention will return it to its past glory. It will not.

The prescriptions are simple – open markets, trade freely, shed cronyism, punish corruption and implement a true democracy. Opening markets means clear and consistent implementation of rules – those regulating market failures such as monopolies and those implementing fair taxation and minimal subsidies. Trading freely means it has to get stronger in areas of comparative advantages and not drive its educated populace to industries of fleeting cost advantages, afforded by a protected currency. Shedding cronyism means that it creates organizations that compete on merit and intellectual property and not those manufacturing profits by connections and handouts. Punishing corruption means that it has to get tougher on white collar crime and use powerful disincentives to remove this issue that is eating into its core. And, implementing a true democracy means that the system is able to understand available choices and elect representatives who are the best leaders, irrespective of where they come from and what their last names are.

It is a long shot.

Buggy OS

The rise of humans from available alternative biological systems has been ably aided by a robust Operating System (OS) design. The hardware, sported by the species, was never a head-turner, showing fragility, clumsiness and lack of power to move fast, climb high or lift heavy. However, the installed OS, compensated for these deficiencies, by allowing efficient use of memory, learning and pattern finding. However, on the downside, the OS appears buggy, thanks to ad-hoc evolutionary processes and random mutations.

For starters, at the core, logic processing appears volatile and seems to be prone to errors. To make matters worse, built in learning and error-correction facilities can and does go haywire, producing unexpected and unreliable outcomes. Since these issues are seen across the entire cross-section of humans, they can only be attributed to the OS itself and not the acquired applications. Early adoption of the next generation OS, perhaps thrust into the market by nature without sufficient testing, seems to have provided an edge early but the tight coupling of high level (but rather premature functionality) ended up in a less robust long-term design.

Humans may be sufficiently limited by a buggy and outdated OS. Newer and more powerful applications – education, culture and art - are unlikely to make a fundamental difference, if this is the case.

Teleported

Recent news that physicists at ETH-Zurich have successfully teleported a large number of qbits, albeit over a short distance, is welcome news for practical quantum computing and telecommunications. It appears that we are fast approaching a possible jump in the application of science, with a theoretical foundation laid down nearly a century ago – something that engineers and technologists have been waiting for many decades. Teleportation and quantum computing have the highest potential to transform the human psyche, currently lost in meaningless wars and less meaningful experiments.

Incrementalism, a disease of modern human societies, has been eating into the potential of humans, substantially lowered by ignorance, conformation, racism and politics. Only a leap in technology that can flatten the ego, wealth and timidity, has any chance of transforming the status-quo. This will not come easy as conventional education and contemporary industry favor less risky mediocrity – most propped up by connections, campaign contributions and charitable donations with tax-breaks. In this toxic pool of influence and 15-minute fame on TED talks, humanity has been held hostage by the blind and the dumb.

Only a leap in technology has any chance of freeing the mind and visualizing the future.